I.E.: Keep Views on ‘The O.C.’ on the Q.T.

You’d think my job description would require that I watch “The O.C.” on Fox every Tuesday night and take careful notes. Got to keep the ol’ finger on the pulse of the county and all that kind of stuff. And yet, I’ve somehow forgotten to watch the first-year show and, as a result, am clueless about what’s happening to Ryan, Seth, Marissa and Summer and the other fun-seekers in their Newport Beach digs.

But they’re watching the show in Riverside and Chino!

And doing a slow burn because of it.

Why in the world, you ask, would someone from Riverside or San Bernardino counties watch a TV show about Orange County? Good question, but the gauntlet was thrown down in the season premiere when one of the Newport Beach hotties (that’s how we hip O.C. people talk) heard that Ryan came from Chino.

Her reply: “Eeewwww.”

That disdain sent some Chinoleans into a lather, and City Manager Glen Rojas wrote a letter of complaint to Fox.

Then, in the third episode, the O.C. crowd struck again. This time, after a Newport Beach woman is overheard complaining about Ryan’s presence in the neighborhood, another character says to her: “You’re from, what, Riverside, which is not that different, really, from where Ryan’s from.”

Insulted, she later tells her husband: “You will not believe what Sandy Cohen said to me. He basically called me white trash. He said I was from Riverside.” When her husband replies, “Honey, you are from Riverside,” she says: “It was his tone.”

You can see how that kind of exchange could inflame the passions. And it apparently had that effect on Riverside Councilman Frank Schiavone, who told the Riverside Press-Enterprise he was going to ask the City Council if it had any legal options. He told the newspaper he had written a letter of protest to Fox’s parent company, asking for an apology and that it stop trashing the city.

Wow. I’ve been told the August heat in the Inland Empire can make you crazy, but folks usually have the sense to do it in the privacy of their own homes.

Is it too obvious to remind these people that they’re talking about a TV show? And on Fox, no less? I don’t think anyone has billed “The O.C.” as a documentary. Complaining about what its characters say is just one step above complaining about something Homer Simpson would say.

Folks, here’s a refresher course on how the food chain works:

When I lived in Omaha, we thought people in Lincoln were uncultured.

When I moved to Denver, the people there put down Omaha.

When I moved to Orange County, I learned that people here considered Denver a cow town.

When Anaheim made the World Series last year, remember San Franciscans telling us how backwater Orange County was? Not to mention what Los Angeles thinks of us.

So it goes.

Sure, it cut like a knife to hear meanies in Denver chide my fellow Nebraskans for getting decked out in red for football games. The hurt lasted until my first Denver Bronco game, where I saw the sophisticates who painted themselves blue and orange and cheered a shirtless guy who came wearing a barrel.

Wasn’t it Confucius who said the best way to deflect jokes is to ignore them, especially if they’re lines from a show on the Fox network?

Protest letters? Cease-and-desist motions?

Oh, please.

As someone who on many nights quietly cried himself to sleep because his town was maligned, let me offer advice to people in Chino and Riverside:

As hard as it may be to do in the dog days of summer, chill.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.